Brendan Lemon insists he didn't make anything up. He really has been dating a major-league baseball player for 18 months, just as he describes in his editor's note in Out magazine.

The letter has stirred up a froth on talk radio and the Internet, and I wondered whether that might have been the point all along. Make people examine rosters, guessing the mystery man's identity. Force them to realize that it could be anyone, and then perhaps, if they have any sense at all, laugh at the whole exercise.

"That might be a good idea, but that's not what I was trying to do," Lemon said.

He wants his boyfriend to come out, nothing more. Or maybe I should say nothing less, because coming out as a gay male athlete in team sports would be a very, very big deal.

A media circus would promptly set up at the guy's locker. The entire team would be distracted, either by its own homophobia or by the media circus. And, as Lemon himself points out, there would undoubtedly be death threats.

"Let's be realistic, he'd have to worry about someone taking a shot at him - - literally taking a shot at him," Lemon said in our interview last week. "I still am amazed, I think it's a miracle, that Jackie Robinson wasn't shot by some lunatic."

Still, it's hard not to consider the aftermath of Lemon's letter without laughing. Imagine a bunch of pro athletes eyeing their teammates, trying to ferret out Lemon's boyfriend, as if there is only one gay man in baseball, as if stereotypes could lead them to the prime suspect.

What hints could they go on? Occupation doesn't work. Nobody moonlights as a baseball player between interior-decorating jobs.

A fondness for cats? My two closest gay male friends regard my critters with scorn. And they haven't helped with my wardrobe, either. Trust me, if you rely on stereotypes, you will be gravely disappointed.

The next jumping-off point for clubhouse fear and loathing is obvious: the shower. Worried about the guy who just handed over a bar of soap? Is he flirting? Don't flatter yourself, mate. He probably thinks you smell bad.

Afraid of being checked out? You know better. Men assess each other's bodies for the same reasons women buy fashion magazines. It's not about lust. It's about competition and envy.

A gay player might be the last one to admire a teammate's physique. Remember, gay athletes have much more to fear than straights.

Only two baseball players have ever come out of the closet, and both did it after they retired. The late Glenn Burke always believed that homophobia short- circuited his career.

Billy Bean, a relatively obscure infielder, came out two years ago and revealed that he had gone directly from his partner's deathbed to a baseball game. He could not afford to explain his loss.

Lemon believes that secrecy is the greatest burden, ultimately more dangerous than the truth. Bean disagrees. After reading Lemon's letter, he told Newsday's Johnette Howard that the Out editor was asking his boyfriend to commit professional suicide.

He might be right. Bean, after all, did play baseball. He knows what players say to each other when the doors are closed. They're rarely so candid with me.

But I'd like to give them more credit than Bean does.

Already, a bunch of teenagers has proven that loyalty to a teammate triumphs over prejudice. When Corey Johnson, a linebacker from Masconomet High School in Massachusetts, came out last year, the other players rallied around him. After a big victory, they sang songs in his honor on the bus ride home. They chose "YMCA" and "It's Raining Men."

If kids can be that sophisticated, surely professional athletes can match them. It's almost insulting, a dumb-jock stereotype, to assume otherwise.

"I'm pretty confident there'd be more support from the team than he imagines," Lemon wrote of his boyfriend. "With the exception of an occasional judgmental type, most of these straight guys don't have a problem with homosexuality. Their prime concern is winning, not who you're sleeping with."

Lemon has taken a lot of flak for his column -- accusations of selfishness, naivete and dishonesty. His only regret, he said, is that he neglected to write that his boyfriend knew about the column in advance and understood that Lemon's job required him to write provocative stories for an openly gay audience.

He does not regret the relatively light tone of the piece, in which he refers to himself as "the other woman." He wishes more people could see the humor in this situation. Even his boyfriend, he says, can laugh about it.

At a game a while back, he said, the loudspeaker started playing "YMCA" just as pregame warm-ups ended. Lemon was in the stands, watching his boyfriend head to the dugout.

"He knew where we were sitting and he looked up at me and rolled his eyes all the way to the back of his head," Lemon said.

Still, I told him, the charge of naivete sticks. He's crazy to think a ballplayer will come out. Even in figure skating, Rudy Galindo stands alone. No one else has ever come out of the closet while still competing.

If there's been only one person in a world filled with sequins and ruffled shirts, what can we expect from the sport of tobacco chaws and incessant spitting? The question is so pathetic, it's funny.